


where all the poets went to die

by faerie_ground



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Charles Xavier, Dystopia, F/F, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Manipulation, please heed the tags this is very dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27892237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faerie_ground/pseuds/faerie_ground
Summary: In a world where Erik leaves the submarine without his helmet, things turn very, very wrong.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Irene Adler (X-Men)/Raven | Mystique
Comments: 4
Kudos: 56





	where all the poets went to die

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this tweet](https://twitter.com/hllfire/status/1335058019172933632?s=20) in which erik without his helmet, gets shot in the head by moira, and what may possibly happen after. im very sorry in advance
> 
> title taken from the lakes by taylor swift 
> 
> tw for mind manipulation without consent, somewhat graphic description of death

In the aftermath, both of them stand at the border of the mansion. The air feels frigid, slicing into Raven’s lungs like a thousand paper cuts. “Charles, please,” she begs, heart in her throat and voice hoarse. “He wouldn’t want you to be like this. He wouldn’t want you to do this. It’s not too late, you can come _back.”_

Charles gazes back, a brick wall. He hasn’t even cleaned up, still in that damnable yellow and blue suit with blood drying in the corners of his mouth, the bridge of his nose. There’s nothing in his eyes- blank, almost see through. He looks as if he’s a mere shade, a ghost lounging about where he once was. Raven knows better. 

“I will raze the world to the ground,” he finally says, his voice free of any inflection, “and when I’m done, no one will be left standing. Not you, and certainly not me.”

*

It’s not as if Charles had been a stranger to death. Death is the stink of pungent ash, of rotting garbage that follows him around, loitering at the edges of his vision with a clarity that Charles can’t avoid. He faces it, with his father and then his mother and then again with Kurt Marko. He has made his peace with it- death is a natural life cycle, one of many processes that’s simply bound to occur. Who is Charles to challenge it? 

This rational flow of logic evaporates on the blood streaked beach of Cuba.

“I can’t let you do this,” Charles gasps as Erik’s fist lands on his cheeks. _Control him,_ a snide voice tells him, _just control him and this will be over._ But Charles can’t just do that either- Erik had left that submarine with that helmet crushed into a tiny metal ball in his palm, mind confident with the surety of how superior their kind was to the humans. “Going to control me to do your bidding, Charles?” Erik had called, and Charles couldn’t find it in himself to respond and prove him right. 

Erik punches him again, his face twisted in a snarl, glass coloured eyes furious and teeth bared even as turmoil clearly twists inside his mind. “Erik,” Charles begs. A tear trickles down from the corner of his eye. The missiles hang in the air, as if dangling on a puppet string. This was not how it was supposed to go, this was not how any of it was supposed to go. “Erik, please, we have to be the b-”

Erik’s gaze had been focused on him. Just him, like it always was with the two of them. A bubble suspended in mid air, cut off from the rest of the world. Neither of them hear Moira drag her gun out from the holster, neither of them hear her cock it and set it to fire, neither of them hear the crack as the bullet leaves it’s safe place. 

And Charles watches, mouth agape, as the bullet plows into the side of Erik’s head. 

Erik never stood a chance. When his body hits the sand, it’s already cold. Raven screams, hand over her mouth. Moira drops the gun, and it lands with a soft thud on the sand, forever marked. And Charles- and Charles-

Charles sits up and feels his heart turn into stone, Erik’s eyes staring back at him unseeing and unfeeling. The turmoil from his mind is gone. It will be gone forever. 

Death is a natural life cycle. Death is a natural life cycle that was never supposed to happen to Erik Lehnsherr. Death is a natural life cycle that was never supposed to happen to Charles Xavier’s humanity. 

Charles looks and immediately finds Moira, hands loose at her sides and mouth agape in regret and remorse. “Charles, I-“

_“You,”_ Charles snarls as he feels the hatred steal over him and take him over, and presses his fingertips to his temple so hard the nails break skin.

*

Erik turns Charles onto his back, pressing a line of kisses down his throat. Pale and elegant, against the rumpled sheets- Erik thinks he’s never seen something so beautiful, so breakable. They’re in Charles’ room, after Charles had soundly beaten him at chess, grinning with triumph and looking so alluring that Erik hadn’t even minded the defeat. 

“Erik, Erik, _Erik,”_ Charles gasps, a litany of whines and sobs. It’s almost a melody, a music Erik wants to box up and hold in his soul forever. He moves south to the dip in Charles’ collarbone, tonguing it with a gentleness he thought he’d never feel for anybody.

“Oh, someone’s coming!” Charles hisses, and Erik instantly shoots up. He’s stopped in his trajectory, though, with one foot on his ass. “Stop, stop, I can-” Charles screws his brow up, pressing a fingertip into his temple and relaxing. “There we go, Hank’s gone now.”

Erik blinks. “Did you- did you mind whammy him?”

“Not _mind whammy,_ I’d never do that,” Charles says, looking mildly offended. “Just a tiny mental nudge, he’d never even feel it. He’ll ask whatever he wants to tomorrow. Come on, get back here-”

Erik refuses, blinking down at him. Charles stops in his ministrations, focusing up on him and then laughing slightly, confusion entering his eyes. Like this, he’s almost angelic, the counterpoint to everything bad and wrong Erik feels within himself. _What will the world do to you,_ Erik thinks, helpless. 

“You’re massively powerful, you know that?” Erik says instead, and then snorts to himself. “Lucky for us you’ll never have any plans for, you know, world domination or the like.”

Charles smiles lightly at him, eyes turning clear with mirth. “Lucky for us,” he echoes, sweeping a lock of hair that flops over Erik’s eyes over to the side. 

*

Charles does not kill Moira. Charles _destroys_ Moira. When he’s done Moira is just a shell of herself, slumped on the sand with her eyes blank, a thin line of drool seeping out of the corner of her mouth. Charles looks at her and feels only devastation, the fire of craving revenge licking up his spine with a ferocity he’s never felt before. It wasn’t enough, it will never be enough, and that realisation dawns on Charles like the settling of a blanket, firm and resolute.

It takes less than a second. When he’s done everyone is staring at him in horror- the mutants who had been allied with Shaw, perhaps a little pride. Raven is white, thoughts screaming from her mind at a pitch so ferociously loud Charles can’t help but hear them. _No, no, no, Charles what did you do what’s wrong with you oh Erik no no-_

“This is your new reality,” Charles spits, and hugs Erik closer to himself. He feels Erik’s blood on his nose, his cheeks, his lips, his tongue. He feels inhuman, a perversion of himself. There’s a crazed sob building in his throat and he knows if he succumbs, he will be done for. 

He looks down and with a shaking, trembling hand, closes Erik’s eyelids. Erik is pale, still and cold against the skin of his fingers. What the hell is telepathy useful for, if it can’t bring Erik back? Erik’s a dead cold spot in the corner of his mind, gone like he’d never been there in the first place. 

“They will die,” Charles finally chokes out. He hunches forward, pressing his forehead against Erik’s blood soaked one. He doesn’t look up. “They will all die. Who is with me?” 

There is a pause, and then Azazel steps forward, Shaw’s allies hot on his heels. 

*

The world descends into war in a blink of an eye, faster than Raven can keep track of. Charles and his X-Men are brutally effective, destroying government institutions, sending the humans fleeing, eroding the very basis of civilisation itself. Raven and her Brotherhood put up a fight and for a while they are good, especially with their psionic proof bracelets, but after a while she stops kidding herself. She can’t hope to achieve the same level of calculated efficiency the X-Men have perfected- she had never been the chess player of the family- and it seems as if her fellow mutants realise it too, with every passing report of yet another country destroyed with with violent warfare, drooling human inhabitants left in their wake. The new decade starts with America being the last left standing, a fragile stronghold that Charles claims in a telepathic broadcast will not be left intact for much longer. 

_“Move on,”_ Raven had insisted, the last time they’d seen each other on the battlefield. “Please, Charles, this isn’t you.”

“He was half of my soul,” Charles had whispered, and then his eyes had hardened into glittering points of sapphires, cold and impenetrable. They’d lost Havok that day, Angel somehow getting his psionic proof bracelet off of him and Charles grinding his mind to dust. There had not been a single sign of recognition, of familiarity in his eyes as he’d done so. The same boy he’d coached into embracing his power, rendered mindless at his hands. Beast had gone nearly berserk that day.

“There is no way this ends,” Raven had whispered, later, in the comfort of her bed to Irene. The tear tracks on her cheeks have long dried up. Her heart has cracked, over and over, so many times it’s sometimes unfathomable to think there’s anything left. 

She can’t remember what Charles had been like, before Erik. She can’t bring to mind the warmth of his eyes, his playful grin, the way he’d coddled her and protected her from Kurt and Cain. All she remembers is this cold visage of him, again and again from newspapers and reports and the grainy screen of the television, eyes glittering and hard as steel and his fingertips, pressed to his temple. 

And yet, she thinks, she still loves him. She still wants her brother back. 

_You didn’t have to die,_ Raven thinks with all her might at Erik. A fruitless endeavour, because he’d never hear her now. _You didn’t have to drag my brother with you._

“Perhaps not,” Irene says softly, tugging on a lock of her hair and twisting it between her fingers. The red looks like fire against her skin, set alight. “But perhaps it might. His hatred is a candle, and it will burn itself out.” Raven can never tell whether these bits of wisdom are actual predictions or just Irene being an all knowing piece of shit. Sometimes it’s endearing, and other times- like now- it’s infuriating.

“It’s been years,” Raven says, tears clogging her throat and voice. “I just never- they knew each other for _months._ He’s known me for years, and yet he chose Erik over me. Why can’t he live without him?” 

“You love me, darling,” Irene says, releasing her hair to scoot over to her on her elbows, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “You know the answer to that well enough.”

*

America falls. 

That night, Charles dreams for the first time in years. He’s lying on his back on a grassy hill, Erik next to him as they look up at the sky together. Erik’s in his typical black turtleneck, khaki coloured pants tapered to his legs. After all these years, Charles still remembers that ensemble with ease, how gorgeous Erik had looked with it. 

“You were never supposed to lose your hope,” Erik croaks next to him. Charles doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be, a manifestation of his long suppressed remorse or an actual impression of his long dead lover from the afterlife, come to him like the ghosts of Christmas past. “You were supposed to be our saviour, our leader. You were supposed to lead us into a new age.” 

_“We_ were supposed to do that together,” Charles says, and then remembers the last time he’d seen Erik’s eyes, full of hate. “Or against each other. You were supposed to be there Erik, and you never were.” 

All this death and destruction, Charles does not say, it’s all for you. Every last death, every country brought to its knees- it’s all been for Erik. The supernova he’d crashed into for a glorious few months and then lost, like the abrupt snuffing out of a candle. 

“Charles,” Erik says. When Charles looks at him he sees that he’s silently crying, eyes wet and face tear-stained. Up until this moment Charles had never registered that he has never actually seen Erik cry; not in his dreams, and certainly not in real life. “Oh, my love. What have you done?”

*

Sebastian Shaw dies on the beach that day. That is true. Erik Lehnsherr dies on the beach that day, too. That is also true. 

Charles Xavier dies on the beach that day. That, perhaps, may not be true, but it certainly is to everyone who knows him. 

The world, true to his words, gets razed to the ground. 

**Author's Note:**

> this is possibly the shortest one shot ive ever written which is an achievement for me. also you can come and yell at me for this on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ROBBIETURNCR) or [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/himbomcavoy)


End file.
